[118] I can hardly avoid doubting, whether Edward VI.'s journal, published in the second volume of Burnet, be altogether his own; because it is strange for a boy of ten years old to write with the precise brevity of a man of business. Yet it is hard to say how far an intercourse with able men on serious subjects may force a royal plant of such natural vigour; and his letters to his young friend Barnaby Fitzpatrick, published by H. Walpole in 1774, are quite unlike the style of a boy. One could wish this journal not to be genuine; for the manner in which he speaks of both his uncles' executions does not show a good heart. Unfortunately, however, there is a letter extant, of the king to Fitzpatrick, which must be genuine, and is in the same strain. He treated his sister Mary harshly about her religion, and had, I suspect, too much Tudor blood in his veins. It is certain that he was a very extraordinary boy, or, as Cardan calls him, monstrificus puellus; and the reluctance with which he yielded, on the solicitations of Cranmer, to sign the warrant for burning John Boucher, is as much to his honour, as it is against the archbishop's. [119] The litany had been translated into English in 1542. Burnet, i. 331; Collier, III, where it may be read, not much differing from that now in use. It was always held out by our church, when the object was conciliation, that the liturgy was essentially the same with the mass-book. Strype's _Annals_, ii. 39; Hollingshed, iii, 921 (4to edition). [120] It was observed, says Strype, ii. 79, that where images were left there was most contest, and most peace where they were all sheer pulled down, as they were in some places. [121] Collier, p. 257, enters into a vindication of the practice, which appears to have prevailed in the church from the second century. It was defended in general by the nonjurors, and the whole school of Andrews. But, independently of its wanting the authority of Scripture, which the reformers set up exclusively of all tradition, it contradicted the doctrine of justification by mere faith, in the strict sense which they affixed to that tenet. See preamble of the act for dissolution of chantries, 1 Edw. 6, c. 14. [122] Collier, p. 248, descants, in the true spirit of a high churchman, on the importance of confession. This also, as is well known, is one of the points on which his party disagreed with the generality of protestants. [123] Nostra sententia est, says Luther, _apud_ Burnet, 111, Appendix, 194, corpus ita cum pane, seu in pane esse, ut revera cum pane manducetur, et quemcunque motum vel actionem panis habet, eundem et corpus Christi.